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Hacker has several common meanings, the unifying characteristic of which is only that it refers to a person who is an avid computer enthusiast. It is most commonly used as a pejorative by the mass media to refer to a person who engages in illegal computer trespass remotely via some sort of communications network (i.e. the Internet, a LAN or a dial-up network), its original meaning referred to an unauthorized user of the telephone company network (now called a Phreaker) but it can also refer to people engaged in ethical computer hacking (i.e. debugging or improving software functionality), to the members of the open source and free software community, or to home computer hobbyists.

Overview

At least three major hacker subcultures, characterized by their largely distinct historical development, use the term 'Hacker' in their jargon for self-identification. They are centered around different, but partially overlapping aspects of computers and have conflicting ideas about who may legitimately be called a hacker (see hacker definition controversy).

In computer security, a hacker is someone who focuses on security mechanisms. In common use, which was popularized by the mass media, that refers to someone who illegally breaks into computer and network systems. That is, the media portrays the 'hacker' as a villain. Nevertheless, parts of the subculture see their aim in correcting security problems and use the word in a positive sense. They operate under a code of the Hacker Ethic, in which it's acknowledged that breaking into other people's computers is bad, but that discovering and exploiting security mechanisms and breaking into computers is nevertheless an interesting aspect that can be done in an ethical and legal way.

This use is contrasted by the different understanding of the word as a person who follows a spirit of playful cleverness and loves programming. It is found in an originally academic movement unrelated to computer security and most visibly associated with free software and open source. It also has a hacker ethic, based on the idea that writing software and sharing the result is a good idea, but only on a voluntary basis, and that information should be free, but that it's not up to the hacker to make it free by breaking into private computer systems. Academic hackers disassociate from the mass media's pejorative use of the word 'hacker' referring to computer security, and usually prefer the term 'cracker' for that meaning. In a third meaning, the term refers to computer hobbyists who push the limits of their software or hardware.

Computer security hackers

In computer security, a hacker is a person who specializes in work with the security mechanisms for computer and network systems. The subculture around such hackers is termed network hacker subculture, hacker scene or computer underground. While including those who endeavor to strengthen such mechanisms, it is more often used by the mass media and popular culture to refer to those who seek access despite these security measures. Accordingly, the term bears strong connotations that may be favorable or pejorative.

The network hacker subculture initially developed in the context of phreaking during the 1960s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. It is implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup.

By 1983, hacking in the sense of breaking computer security had already been in use as computer jargon, but there was no public awareness about such activities. However, the release of the movie WarGames that year raised the public belief that computer security hackers (especially teenagers) could be a threat to national security. This concern became real when a gang of teenage hackers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin known as The 414s broke into computer systems throughout the United States and Canada, including those of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. The case quickly grew media attention, and 17-year-old Neal Patrick emerged as the spokesman for the gang, including a cover story in Newsweek entitled "Beware: Hackers at play", with Patrick's photograph on the cover. The Newsweek article appears to be the first use of the word hacker by the mainstream media in the pejorative sense.

As a result of news coverage, congressman Dan Glickman called for an investigation and new laws about computer hacking. Neal Patrick testified before the U.S. House of Representatives on September 26 1983 about the dangers of computer hacking, and six bills concerning computer crime were introduced in the House that year. As a result of these laws against computer criminality, white hat, grey hat and black hat hackers try to distinguish themselves from each other, depending on the legality of their activities.

Open Source and Free Software hackers

In the Open Source and Free Software hacker culture, a computer hacker is a person who enjoys designing software and building programs with a sense for aesthetics and playful cleverness.

According to Eric S. Raymond, the Open source and Free Software hacker subculture developed in the 1960s among ‘academic hackers’ working on early minicomputers in computer science environments. After 1969 it fused with the technical culture of the pioneers of the Arpanet. The PDP-10 machine AI at MIT, which was running the ITS operating system and was connected to the Arpanet, provided an early hacker meeting point. After 1980 the subculture coalesced with the culture of Unix, and after 1987 with elements of the early microcomputer hobbyists that themselves had connections to radio amateurs in the 1920s. Since the mid-1990s, it has been largely coincident with what is now called the free software and open source movement.

Many programmers have been labeled "great hackers," but the specifics of who that label applies to is a matter of opinion. Certainly major contributors to computer science such as Edsger Dijkstra and Donald Knuth, as well as the inventors of popular software such as Linus Torvalds (Linux), and Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson (the C programming language) are likely to be included in any such list; see also List of programmers. People primarily known for their contributions to the consciousness of the academic hacker culture include Richard Stallman, the founder of the free software movement and the GNU project, president of the Free Software Foundation and author of the famous Emacs text editor as well as the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), and Eric S. Raymond, one of the founders of the Open Source Initiative and writer of the famous text The Cathedral and the Bazaar and many other essays, maintainer of the Jargon File (which was previously maintained by Guy L. Steele, Jr.).

Within the academic hacker culture, the term hacker is also used for a programmer who reaches a goal by employing a series of modifications to extend existing code or resources. In this sense, it can have a negative connotation of using kludges to accomplish programming tasks that are ugly, inelegant, and inefficient. This derogatory form of the noun "hack" is even used among users of the positive sense of "hacker" (some argue that it should not be, due to this negative meaning; others argue that some kludges can, for all their ugliness and imperfection, still have "hack value"). In a very universal sense, a hacker also means someone who makes things work beyond perceived limits in a clever way in general, for example reality hackers.

Hobby Hackers

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The hobby hacking subculture relates to the hobbyist home computing of the late 1970s, beginning with the availability of MITS Altair. An influential organization was the Homebrew Computer Club.

The areas that didn't fit together with the academic hacker subculture focus mainly on commercial computer and video games, software cracking and exceptional computer programming (demo scene), but also to the modification of computer hardware and other electronic devices, see modding.

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References

1. Fred Shapiro: Antedating of "Hacker". American Dialect Society Mailing List (13. Juni 2003)
2. http://webzone.k3.mah.se/k3jolo/HackerCultures/origins.htm
3. See the 1981 version of the Jargon File, entry "hacker", last meaning.
4. "Computer hacking: Where did it begin and how did it grow?". WindowSecurity.com. October 16, 2002. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
5. Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1983 {{citation}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
6. Elmer-DeWitt, Philip (Aug. 29, 1983), "The 414 Gang Strikes Again", Time magazine, pp. p. 75 {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
7. "Beware: Hackers at play", Newsweek, pp. pp. 42-46, 48, September 5, 1983 {{citation}}: |pages= has extra text (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)
8. "Timeline: The U.S. Government and Cybersecurity". Washington Post. 2002. Retrieved 2006-04-14.
9. David Bailey, "Attacks on Computers: Congressional Hearings and Pending Legislation," sp, p. 180, 1984 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 1984.
10. Eric S. Raymond: A Brief History of Hackerdom (2000)
11. http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch20s06.html
12. Graham, Paul (2004). "Great Hackers".
13. See for example the MIT Gallery of Hacks

Related books

• Michael Hasse: Die Hacker: Strukturanalyse einer jugendlichen Subkultur (1994).

Computer security hacking books

• Logik Bomb: Hacker's Encyclopedia (1997)
• Katie Hafner & John Markoff: Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (Simon & Schuster, 1991), ISBN 0-671-68322-5.
• Sterling, Bruce (1992). The Hacker Crackdown. Bantam. ISBN 0-553-08058-X.
• Slatalla, Michelle (1995). Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-017030-1. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Dreyfus, Suelette (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. Mandarin. ISBN 1-86330-595-5.
• Verton, Dan (2002). The Hacker Diaries : Confessions of Teenage Hackers. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. ISBN 0-07-222364-2.

Free Software/Open Source hacking books

• Eric S. Raymond, Guy L. Steele (Eds.): The New Hacker's Dictionary (The MIT Press, 1996), ISBN 0262680920
• Raymond, Eric S. (2003). The Art of Unix Programming. Prentice Hall International. ISBN 0131429019.
• Levy, Steven (1984). Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-19195-2.
• Turkle, Sherry (1984),The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit , New Edition: MIT Press 2005, ISBN 0262701111
• Graham, Paul (2004). Hackers and Painters. ISBN 0-59-600662-4.
• Karim R. Lakhani, Robert G Wolf: Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects. In J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. Hissam, and K. R. Lakhani(Eds.): Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2005)

External links

• Interview with Steven Levy: About the different hacker subcultures and their relations.
• The Word "Hacker"

Computer security hacking weblinks

• The Ten Biggest Legends of the Hacker Universe
• Hacking in 17 easy steps, by Doug Mclean.
• How To Become A Hacker, by Gary D. Robson.

Free Software/Open Source hacking weblinks

• Portraits of Open Source Pioneers
• How To Become A Hacker by Eric S. Raymond, open source perspective
• Become a Free Software Hacker, Free Software perspective
• The Hacker Community and Ethics: An interview with Richard M. Stallman, 2002

• Computer hacking
• Computing culture